Conversations on Christmas Eve

Conversations on Christmas Eve

I’m sitting in my aunt & uncle’s kitchen, my coffee long cold, listening to my grandmother ask the same questions every five minutes. The baby is still sleeping upstairs, my mother is still on her way for Christmas, and there will still be twelve of us around the table.

Oh, Gram.

My grandmother is fading fairly quickly into the locked depths of Alzheimer’s, which was finally officially diagnosed in the past few months. She’ll likely factor into these posts, though this isn’t a blog about Alzheimer’s, but about my life and endeavors as a woman who strives for creativity, love, hope, and who writes it all down along the way.

I was previously at This Beautiful Heartache, but while I still love the name (a line from my favorite band, Over the Rhine), the name and the URL aren’t quite right. I started that blog toward the tale end of the “angst years.” The URL, visitcuba.wordpress.com, while personally significant, comes up in travel searches, and it’s just not a good fit.

It’s Christmas Eve and I’m typing this in a brief lull before twelve of us crowd around the table to enjoy my uncle’s smoked chicken, followed by creamy tembleque (coconut pudding). And we’ll try to get the kids to sleep so we can unload the boxes of wrapped presents under the tree. It’s still a new feeling for me to be a parent on this holiday, and it’s the first year that Sofia (my oldest) can understand, and she can’t wait for morning!

I’m hoping to find my voice again in this space, and I hope you’ll join me, and be part of the conversations here.

For now, I’m shutting the computer to go have the same conversation, again, with my grandmother. We may do this for what feels like an infinite number of times over these holidays, but in reality, the conversations are repetitive but ultimately numbered and we’re all quietly aware of that.